Monday, January 17, 2011

It's been another week of revisiting last year. I downloaded a World Cafe podcast of Pete Yorn performing at the NPR program's Philadelphia venue World Cafe Live. That take on "Precious Stone" is pretty fucking great and caused me to listen to nothing but Yorn's music on my commute to work for three days straight. His self-titled album (or, The Black Album, since it was produced by Frank Black) is his best ever and deserves to be heard by a wider audience.

Friday, January 07, 2011

It's rare that the number-one song in the country is also a SOTW. (So rare that it's never happened before.) I spent the past few days listening through some 2010 albums I bought post-Christmas and Doo-Wops & Hooligans was amongst that collection. "Grenade" first caught my ear when Mars was on Saturday Night Live back in October (especially when he sang a few lines of "Nothing on You" as the song's intro). After I listened to Doo-Wops & Hooligans for the first time, I ended up hearing "Grenade" in a store. And then on Church Ave coming out of a car. Finally I saw the video that night on MTV Hits. It's weird how once the floodgates are opened a song will show up everywhere.

"Grenade" is one of the few current songs that I can completely grasp why it's a number-one hit. Mars sings his lungs out and the production is great. And plenty of people (including yours truly) have been in love with a person yet known that the object of their affection doesn't feel as deeply. It's got an appeal to a wide demographic.